1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and an article of manufacture for selecting replication volumes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data in information technology systems, including storage systems, may need to be replicated for a variety of reasons, such as, for data migration, data backup, data duplication etc. Such replication or copying of data may involve interactions among hosts, storage systems and connecting networking components of the information technology system.
An enterprise storage server (ESS), such as the IBM* TOTALSTORAGE ENTERPRISE STORAGE SERVER*, may be a disk storage server that includes one or more processors coupled to storage devices, including high capacity scalable storage devices, Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), etc. The enterprise storage servers are connected to a network and include features for copying data in storage systems.
Enterprise storage servers (ESS) may include replication functions for copying data either locally, i.e., within the same ESS, or remotely, i.e., copying data to a separate ESS. Implementations may replicate data between a set of source volumes and a corresponding set of target volumes in one or more enterprise storage servers. In certain enterprise storage servers there may be fast replication functions, such as, FLASHCOPY*, that copies ESS volumes. The fast replication functions may copy ESS volumes with minimal interruption to applications, and may make it possible to access both the source and target copies substantially immediately. Both the source and the target volumes may reside on the same ESS system, although implementations may be possible where the source and target volumes reside on different ESS systems. In many implementations, volumes that are eligible for fast replication may have special features. Further details of fast replication techniques, such as, FLASHCOPY*, are described in the IBM publication “IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server: Implementing ESS Copy Services with IBM eServer zSeries,” IBM document no. SG24-5680-01 (Copyright IBM, 2003), which publication is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.